https://gomockingbird.com/projects/j66gjt5
Okay so this is my best friend Megan. -------------------------------> She's a beautiful, talented, brilliant, powerful musk-ox... AND she's an amazing journalist! She now works at Channel 5, but until recently she worked at News 2 (WKRN) as their digital producer. This pretty much means she put together the stories to post on WKRN's website and social media accounts. I always enjoyed those moments when I was scrolling through my newsfeed and came upon a story that I KNEW she had written because I just know her. Below is the original post. I would show the story itself that came up when you click the link, but it has actually been updated since first posted so it's not the same. However, I will go ahead and tell you that the photos of the victims used in the body of the story were mug shots, since both victims had criminal records. This will give some context for what happened next. Let's first stop and look at what we know so far. Audience: anyone on Facebook, but particularly Nashville residents. Genre: Facebook post, obviously, but moreover it's acting as a teaser for the larger, longer story it links to. Author: WKRN, and the writer of the story on the website, but more specifically for this FB post, my friend Megan. Purpose: Because the main story is about the couple the police are searching for I would say the purpose of this post is to get their faces out there in case anyone spots them. The purpose of this post is not to talk about the victims. As you can see, many who saw this post were upset that the photo of those wanted for questioning was a happy, smiley photo and the photos of the victims were mug shots. They also totally ignored what WKRN said about only being able to use photos released by the police. A number of people were also confused by the photos used, thinking that the victims were those in the happy photo and the couple wanted by police was those in the mug shot photos. This brings us to... Context: We are in the American South, and unfortunately racial bias still runs pretty strong here. Since one of the victims was black and the suspects were white, some of those who expressed confusion were attacked by other Facebookers for assuming the black man (whose mug shot was used) was the suspect. So far, we have a situation where the police (and by extension WKRN) have perhaps made a mishap in communicating information to the public. It was unfortunate that the photos of the victims were mug shots, but I don't think people should have been berating WKRN for this. See more berating below: I'm honestly not sure if communication breakdowns like this can be avoided because people are always going to freak out on Facebook posts and people are always going to be a bit misinformed about the way things like professional journalism really work.
The breakdown could also be due to the fact that people seemed to be responding to visual information first and linguistic second. The post clearly states "police are searching for these two people..." I think this is more of a 'pay better attention to what you see/read on social media' and less of a 'those slimy journalists must be stopped' situation. But maybe I'm just biased. However I do think there's something to be said about the mug shots the police chose to release of the victims. I agree with the sentiment some of these people are expressing, but I just think there was a communication breakdown in that they were attacking the wrong person/entity and using the wrong reasoning in their arguments. WKRN did seem to realize that the mug shots weren't the best representation of the victims, so as I mentioned earlier they did update the story on their website to use different photos. I think this was the best possible thing they could have done in this situation. |
Anna SharpBelmont writing major who is about to become a Real Adult™ and still owns like 12 coloring books. Archives
May 2016
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